


Faded Luck

by auselysium



Series: Faded Luck [1]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Canon Divergent, M/M, Talking, lots of talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 21:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13622313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auselysium/pseuds/auselysium
Summary: “Suppose I walked you to your car,” I’d said.“Suppose you came for dinner.”“Suppose I did.”The exchange had been coy, lightly drunk and teasing.  But then Oliver’s supplicated, “Please, Elio,” had become the difference maker.Or - What happens if Elio does go to dinner at Oliver's house.  And why was Elio at Oliver's university in the first place?





	Faded Luck

_No it wasn't maiden-up,_ _the falling or the faded luck_

_Hung up in the ivory, both were climbing for a finer cause_

_Love can hardly leave the room_

_With your heart_ Bon Iver, Michicant

*

There is a sunset forming along the horizon, parallel to the small four-lane road that curves along the river away from the university and out to the suburbs.  For now, the sky is gentle, the inevitable end of any other daylight savings day, all pale purple and the unobtrusive grays of layered clouds.  But I have lived under these New England skies long enough and know the type.  Soon, the sun will dip to such an angle to turn the whole evening a brilliant, burnished pink, giving even the busiest or most cynical a reason to stop and look up.  Soon, it will feel like the whole world is under this same neon sky, the color of which doesn’t exist elsewhere in nature aside from the most ferocious poppies of August.  

I take it as a sign that I’ve made the right decision, against all better judgement and pre-made promises to myself, to go to Oliver’s house for dinner.

“Suppose I walked you to your car,” I’d said.

“Suppose you came for dinner.”

“Suppose I did.”

The exchange had been coy, lightly drunk and teasing.  But then Oliver’s supplicated, “ _Please_ , Elio,” had become the difference maker.  He may well have said, Fifteen years, Elio.  Three drinks and a handful hours, Elio.  Don’t we deserve just a bit more of each other before who knows how many more years cut between us, Elio?

He’d worn his pleading hope so plainly on his face.

I’d imagined watching Oliver fade away from me just as he had that morning at the Roma Termini Stazione.  Would Oliver choke on his words as we said our farewells as he had then?  Or would he simply take his leave with a friendly hug, that accursed ‘Later’, shut the car door and slip back into his life?  The life that I’d never been privy to, had no context for.  Meal, children, work, wife, bed as if I had never stopped by his lecture, or back into his life, at all?

I had imagined going back into the hotel, eating alone at the bar, then to my room to look through the window at the town and campus below.  Staring at a ridge of mountains in the distance, old and rolling, and wonder if I could see his house from here.  

“Should we at least call your wife?  Let her know I’m coming?”  I’d said when I realized for all my misgivings none of those outcomes sounded remotely acceptable.  The night had been brilliant so far and I just hadn’t been ready for it to end. Oliver had clasped my shoulder, giddy, and gone to find a payphone in the lobby.

We’d fallen back into a comfortable banter in the car, with the pressure to fit in everything lifted we’d left the deep talk at the bar along with a handsome tip.

Oliver had shown me to his car and unlocked my door first, not going so far as to open it for me, but only just.  The car is messy, littered with the professorial disarray that is too familiar to me.  What is it with the intellectual type and clutter? There is a sun bleached gym bag in the back seat, a well worn pair of running shoes tumbling out.  I’d wondered if he had gone this morning or if I’d ruined his plans for a post class jog.  

“You ok to drive?”  I’d asked, still feeling the affects of our several drinks myself.  He’d given me a look that was all at once over-confident, patronizing, comforting and gorgeous.

The sunset has flared and dwindled just as expected on the drive and we are laughing by the time Oliver turns onto the short subdivision streets and finally up a narrow drive. The headlights illuminate a perfectly comfortable contemporary home.  Very upper middle-class New England, cedar siding, white shutters, red front door.   _Oliver home_ , I think.  Inside, _Oliver wife_.  

My gut churns, but Oliver himself, if he is nervous about these two parts of his life colliding, masks it with aplomb.  He gathers his briefcase and bounds up the front steps, barely waiting to make sure I’m following behind.  He doesn’t need a key to open the door.

“Steph, we’re here!”

The name.  

It rolls so easily from his lips and I think of the thousands, millions probably, of times he has said it in all its variations.  Uttered in love and passion and frustration and encouragement.  I suppose I should feel jealous of her, but I’m not sure I do.  Just as I hadn’t really been that winter day when he’d come to my bedroom and told me about his impending marriage.  It was more complicated than jealousy.  And whatever emotions I’d felt then and continue to feel now, have nothing to do with her.  Just him and the time we never had.

I’d never imagined her in the intervening years.  What would have been the point?  But in the scant seconds between stepping into the warmth of his home’s entryway and her rounding the corner from what I assume is the kitchen, I prepare myself.   

Oliver had left Italy a prime specimen of male attractiveness.  Tall, tanned and lean, with those beautiful eyes and effortless hair and a smile that could melt the iciest heart until they were a simpering puddle at his feet, he could have had anyone upon his return from New York.  So I expect someone equally beautiful, tall and elegant and busty.  I imagine someone with an exotic beauty to match his _muvi star_ good looks.  Someone who would have been worthy of him moving on from me so swiftly. From us.

And yet when she comes into view, looking a bit frazzled, her nondescript brown hair pulled back hastily, like she’s just spent the last 20 minutes from Oliver’s phone call to our arrival doing the best she can to make her home look presentable, she’s nothing like I could have imagined.  

Stephanie is, for lack of a better word, plain.  Not unpretty, just unremarkable.  She stands well short of him, her head barely reaching his shoulders.  Her hips are round, widened after two babies and the years of raising them.  She’s still wearing her pale yellow scrubs from a day at work as a nurse at a retirement home which means she’s not only smart but also compassionate.  Her lips are a pretty pink and there are freckles on her bright cheeks.  There is a genuine warmth to her eyes too, as Oliver kisses her quickly on the temple and makes our introductions.

The awkwardness is expected as she apologizes for the state of her home and herself, and I apologize for my surprise appearance.   

“It’s just so nice to finally meet you, Elio,” she says as we both remember our manners.  I take her hand and it’s warm.   Oliver is watching the pair of us closely.  Does he want us to get along?  Become enemies?

“Likewise.  I appreciate letting me ambush you both like this.”  

Oliver jumps in to explain how I’d just shown up at his class earlier this afternoon.  “Isn’t that crazy?”  He says, getting two more beers from the fridge for the pair of us.  He’s still a bit tipsy and exuberant, smiling wide.  Yellow swimsuit, Oliver.  

Steph however, is giving her husband an uneasy look I remember my mother giving my father from time to time, or more often Mafalda giving Manfredi when he was about to be slapped upside the head.

I take Oliver’s offered beer but then quickly excuse myself to the restroom.  I linger in the small, peach colored toilet as they have words, hushed but heated.  I can’t tell what they’re saying, but it’s obviously about me.  Eventually the front door slams and only then do I emerge.

“She has to go get the boys.  Lacrosse and karate,” Oliver explains. He’s putting dishes away in the kitchen with brusque motions, letting cabinet doors slam.  

“I shouldn’t have come, should I?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he nearly snaps, residual frustration sent in my direction.  He sighs.  “She doesn’t blame you, ok?  It’s my fault,” then more to himself, like he’s keeping a running tally.  “It’s always my fault.”

He informs me that we’re in charge of having dinner ready by the time they get back. Oliver instructs me.  Garlic from the pantry, stock pot from the second drawer next to the fridge.  Use the back burner as the others take forever to bring water up to a boil.

I’ve picked up enough cooking skills in my life to predict the next step of the process, anticipate what Oliver might need next before he asks.  We work together with ease and in sync.  

There was always a sense of being known by Oliver before he'd ever really known me.  The way he could interpret my thoughts, read between my lines.  I feel that same sense of kinship now: a friendship, _freundschaft_ , that had been there long before he had become my lover.  Recognition of a soul so similar to ourselves the other starts to feels like a scientific constant, a measurable fact.  Our summer in B., 15 years, cocktails at a hotel bar, none of it matters - Our connection simply _is_.  There is no use denying that any more.

The heavy thuds of school bags falling to the floor and the raised voices of brothers already bickering announce the arrival of the next round of my indoctrination in Oliver’s life.  I brace myself to meet Oliver’s sons.

The youngest, still possessing none of the self-awareness that will make such things uncool in a few years time, comes straight to Oliver with a sweet, “Hi dad”.  He hugs him around the middle, his head resting against his belly.  Oliver hugs him back.  The boy has his mother’s coloring but he looks at me with Oliver’s eyes when he says ‘Hello’, shaking my hand with his small palm when I offer.

The eldest, his uniform grass stained and shins dirty, breezes through the kitchen with all of Oliver’s feigned bravura, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and mumbling a greeting to his father without even noticing me.  

“Hey you,” Oliver says, catching him by the wrist before he can sweep through the room.  He’s tall for his age and lanky.  Someday he’ll stand as high as his father, I’m sure.  On his still boyish face I can make out the construct of Oliver’s features, high cheekbones, elegant chin.

“Where you headed so fast?”

“Homework.”  I was unaware such a banal word could sound so annoyed.  I smirk at Oliver and he rolls his eyes.

“This is my friend Elio.  We stayed with his family that time we went to Italy, do you remember?”

“Not really,” he says, drinking his water.  “I was, like, 8 or something.”

Oliver eyes him, thoughtful and bemused.  “Get cleaned up, dinner in 10.”  But then he reaches for him again, a nurturing hand to his shoulder, and leans down to catch his eyes. He lowers his voice for the boy’s sake.  “Happy day?”

“Yeah,” he says, an unwilling smile passing over his lips.  “Happy day.”

I’m positively enchanted.  It’s easy to imagine father Oliver pulling them, shrieking and rosy-cheeked, on a sled through the snow.  Sitting in patience at the kitchen table working through frustrating math homework.  Using those hands, which had once done the very same for me, to wipe away tears.  I find myself feeling glad for him and those young men.

Stephanie joins us again in the kitchen having changed into clothes, that are both casual and flattering.  She’s smoothed her hair back, put on some lip gloss.   

“Should I open a bottle of wine?”  She offers.

“I shouldn’t…”  I start.

“Sure.”  Oliver says at the same time.  His answer wins.  It’s a red from a vineyard not twenty miles from B.  I wonder if he knows.  Of course he knows.

Dinner unfolds in the pattern to any weeknight family meal.  Forgotten water glasses, the need for one more serving spoon, yells for the boys to come down “Now!”  Stephanie continues to apologize when things aren’t perfect and I wish she’d stop.  I adore the familiarity of it, the impression that they do this every night together.  I sit next to Oliver who is at the head of the table and opposite Stephanie.  I feel like a fly on the wall, just watching Oliver’s life unfold.

“So you’re like...Italian, right?”

It’s Jake, the youngest who is sitting next to me.

“I grew up in Italy, yeah.”

“But you don’t have an accent.”

The adults giggle.  “Mi dispiace, mio piccolino signor.  E meglio questo?” I say, laying on the thickest Lombardi accent I possibly can.  Adam’s eyes go wide.  

“Elio speaks about 8 gagillion languages,” Oliver says, a mischievous smirk cast my way.

“Six, maybe. If you count the ones I can read.”  

“Why would you want to do that?” Adam, the other boy, finally chimes in.  “I can’t stand my Spanish class.”  

Steph gives him a tempering look.

“It’s partially because of the work I do,” I say, addressing Adam directly. “But mostly it’s because I grew up speaking lots of languages.  Italian-French American parents.  It kind of just happened by accident.”

“How are your parents, by the way?”  Stephanie asks.  “They were both so lovely to us when we visited.  Your father especially has been so kind to Oliver all these years,”  Steph asks and Oliver immediately hisses, “Jesus, Steph, seriously?” wiping a weary hand across his eyes and she immediately blanches, catching her mistake.  “I’m sorry.  Oh, I’m so sorry, I’d completely forgotten.”

“It’s ok,” I say to the table in general, then again with a look to Oliver.  “It’s ok.  Really.”  I reach for his knee under the table but don’t quite make contact.  

“What?”  Adam asks.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Oliver says.

“My father died about a year and half ago.”

Everyone is silent for a moment.  I can feel Oliver’s annoyance and Stephanie’s embarrassment roll of them in turn.

“That sucks,” Adam says finally.  

“Yeah, it does.”  I agree, unable to discredit his succinct, teenaged simplicty.

Later Stephanie shoos Oliver and I away as we try to help clear the table.     

“I’ll take over,” She says. She’s still sheepish about her faux pas over my father and can’t meet my eye.  “You two go hideout in the study.  I’ll be sure to keep the boys away.”

His office is tucked away from the rest of the house, a space designated for writing but also escaping, as is made evident by its nice stereo system and a well stocked liquor cabinet.  I like that we are secluded, giving the impression of separation while still very much in the midst of everything.  It feels like our quarters in B. had.  For ten days, we had made those two bedrooms, our bath and the patio between our own private world while still existing in the same reality as others.

There is a pair of tall windows along the far wall.  It’s dark now, but there is enough ambient light from the street lamps and other houses that I can make out the trees on the edge of the back yard.  His desk is covered in stacks of paper, legal pads with his familiar script on every line.  I know the curves of those e’s and l’s and o’s so well.  

“Drink?”  He asks, a bottle of scotch already open and in his hand.

“I really shouldn’t.”

“Nah, you really should,” he says and I don’t have the power to resist.  

I scan some of the titles on the well packed bookshelves as he pours.  World history compilations mixed with Plato in Latin, American-Italian dictionaries and…

“You have all my books.”  

“And what, you don’t have all of mine?  I’m insulted.”

He’s playing and I laugh gently because of course I do, his book on Hearaclitus the most worn and well read of them all.  He pushes play on the CD player and soon the falling triplets of Siegfried's Idyll fill the room. I immediately thing of the afternoon he’d found the 3 cassette set of _Tristan and Isolde_ at a shop in B. and brought them back, insisting I sit down in front of the stereo and listen to that iconic chord with him.  

Oliver slumps back in his chair, his long legs crossing at the ankles.  

“Sometimes I still feel guilty for how much I like Wagner.”

It’s said with such simple musing that I feel like it hasn’t been 15 years at all.  He’s simply gone into town to pick up his translation and now he’s back for the afternoon.  Perhaps it’s cloudy and the waves in the bay are white capped so no one is in the mood for swimming and we’re sitting together in the living room, just chatting, waiting for Mafalda to ring the bell for dinner.

I assume a similarly relaxed position on the couch opposite.  I like this.  Perhaps too much.

“My father always said that if we only ever listened to composers who weren’t controversial to some group or another we’d all get really sick of Mendelssohn.”

Oliver snickers, then turns serious.

“God, Elio, I should have been there.  For Samuel’s funeral,” he clarifies before I even seek an explanation.  

“It was a horrible time of the semester, no one blames you for not being able to get away.”

“Still, that’s the kind of thing as you get older that you never forgive yourself for.  He always treated me like part I was part of the family.  Almost like...Like I was a son-in-law.”

That metaphor makes my skin tingle.

“You were their favorite, out of all of them.  Mine too,” I add, with a shy smile.

He rolls his head on the back of his chair to look in my direction.  His voice warms.  “I should hope so.”

I feel myself blush. I hope it simply blends into the already high color in my cheeks from all our drinks.  

“I called him once when Adam was a baby,” Oliver says, returning to a more conversational tone.  “I had been up with him all night, and I mean _all night_ , and I brought him in here so Steph could get some sleep.  And I felt so damned useless and alone.  He just wouldn’t stop crying.  I couldn’t call anyone here because it was about 3 in the morning and it wasn’t like I was going to call my parents for advice, so I picked up the phone and called him instead.”

I listen carefully, amazed by the story.  My father, his son.  We have been linked together through generations and paternal love more than I could have ever realized.  

“What did he say?” I ask, breathless.

“I’ll never forget, he said, ‘Just love him.  That’s all you can ever do.  And if you love him, and he knows he’s loved, then you’re the best father to him you could ever be.’”  

There are tears in both our eyes now.

“You are a good father, Oliver.”

He laughs, sniffs, wipes at the corner of his eye.  “Well, I’m glad you think so.”

“You are, I can tell.”

“It’s the most terrifying this I’ve ever done.  I mean, God, we were kids when we had Adam.  Steph was only 24, I’d barely turned 26.  But it’s also the best thing that’s ever happened to me.  You think you know what love is, but then you hold your kid and...Sorry.  I’m getting sentimental.”  

“You’re allowed,” I say, tipping my glass in his direction and taking a drink.  He drinks too.

“You weren’t so bad with them, yourself, you know.”

“Other people's children, that’s always been my area of expertise.”

“You don’t want kids?”

“That hasn’t exactly been a biological possibility with many of my relationships.”  

“Oh, right,” Oliver blushes.

“But there was a time when I thought, maybe.  In the end, it didn’t work out.”

“Why not?”

“It was right after grad school.  We had a place together, were thinking about making it official.  But she got a job offer on the west coast, something she couldn’t turn down, and I’d just started my current position.  In the end, we weren’t equipped to do long distance into perpetuity.  It was for the best, really.”

“And now?  Is there someone?  You never said.”

“No.  Not now.”  That statement makes him sad, such a delicate look on his rugged face.  “But there has been,” I say quickly, trying to take that pained look from his eyes.  “People I’ve loved too much. People I haven’t loved enough.  You didn’t ruin me for all future lovers, or anything like that.”

He smiles gently, relieved.  

Our whole conversation has been punctuated by sounds of his wife moving through the house, ordering their kids to get their homework done and get ready for bed.  But I have half a mind to ask if he loves her the way I’ve loved others?  Deeply and truly, but always with an acknowledgement that it is pale and practical in comparison to something else.

Is it possible that his happiest days are the same as mine?

A knock on the door halts what would have been a question I, in reality, have no right to know.

“Just wanted to let you know the kids are getting ready for bed. I’ll probably turn in too.”  Steph perches on the arm of his chair.  He puts his hand around her without a thought.  Casual, easy, familiar.  

She tips the tumbler of whisky towards her to check its contents, her eyebrow arching in a playfully judgemental way.  “You having a good time?”

“I’ve only had the one,” Oliver says, answering a different question. She hums and then points at me.

“You don’t let this one keep you up, too late.  You get him started about his summer in Italy and he’ll wax poetical about it all night long.”

“She’s exaggerating,” Oliver tells me.

But is she?  What exactly does Oliver say when he goes down memory lane about his summer in B.?

“Does she know about us?”  I ask the moment she leaves and the door to our private space is closed once more.

Oliver sighs heavily and shakes his head.  “I mean, she knows who you are, obviously.  She knows you were there and she knows I was with someone that summer.  But she doesn’t know that you and the person I was in love with were one and the same.”

“Love.”  The word is repeated before I can stop it.  It bursts out on a laugh, bitter, spurred on by all the alcohol and the way Stephanie’s fingers had trailed up the length of his arm and over his shoulder as she’d gotten up.

Oliver sets his glass his drink on the table next to him and turns his full attention to me.  He leans forward, quite serious.  “What did you think I felt for you, Elio?”

His look is that of shattered glass.  And he may well have taken one of those shards, slipped it between my ribs and twisted.

Of course it had been love, the purest, most earnest, most complete love I’d ever felt.  The kind of love that haunts us both. But it had never been spoken.  Not in B. Not in Rome.  Never used as a closing of a letter, perhaps out of discretion, leaving the depth of our feelings to be expressed adroitly, _cor cordium_ , _Later_ and the like.  But I’d never doubted what I’d felt.  Always assumed what he may have.  What seventeen year old me would have given to hear it just the once.

“For the record, that’s how I felt too,” I admit and Oliver’s next inhale stutters.  Perhaps twenty-four year old Oliver had needed to hear it, too.  “Just using that word now, now that we can’t do anything with it...it makes it all the more tragic, doesn’t it?”

“Well, it is tragic.”  He sits back, plays with the hem of his trousers.  “‘We wasted so many days,’ right?” He uses my words from our night on the rock.  He remembers everything.  “I can’t think of anything more tragic than that.”

We’ve circled back to the beginning.  Back to the regret.  The heartache.  The envy of those two boys who are still too much ourselves.  If it goes on any longer who knows where we’ll end up.  And yet it is an exhilarating and irresistible moment.  My heart beats faster at the innumerable possibilities of what could happen in it.

Also knowing we’ve reached some sort of precipice, Oliver leans forward, his empty hands upwards and out towards me, an offer to go over that knife’s edge together.  

“It can’t be another 15 years, Elio.”

“It won’t be.”

“You promise?”  I nod hastily.  “Good.  Because honestly, looking at you right now, I don’t know if I can bare another 15 hours without seeing you again.”

I want nothing more than to take those hands, to feel every nerve ending in my body fire as the pale skin of his palms aligns with mine.  I want to place them on my waist, my bearded cheek, my ass, as if to say, Touch me anywhere. Do anything. I’m still yours.  I want to crawl onto the plush area rug so artfully placed, presumably by his wife between his chair and mine, and pry his knees apart, slip between them and steal him back to me.  I want to press my lips to his, my body.  Run my nose up the length of his neck, inhaling so deeply the smell of his aftershave will linger in my nostrils for hours after.  I don’t want to have to remember what it was like any more.  I just feel him in the here and now.  

I want to reclaim him from this half-life he’s made me privy to.   And by the fearless, imploring look in Oliver’s eyes, I know he wants me to.  Perhaps this, this very moment, is why he’d wanted me to come to his home so desperately.  To bare witness, then play the savior.

“I should go.”

Instead of all those beautiful things, I snap the moment in two.  The afternoon and evening have unfolded magnificently and we’re both caught in a ground swell of nostalgia, a feeling that is so very dangerous to our aging hearts.  The repercussions of any act can’t be properly sussed out, drunk on that sentimentality.  We aren’t without our entanglements anymore.  Even one kiss could cause irreparable wreckage, especially since I know myself and I know him, and one kiss could never be enough.  

Oliver blinks, retreats back into his chair.  “If I’ve made you uncomfortable...”

“No, no, that’s not it at all,” I say, wishing his hands were still extended towards me instead of tucked protectively around his middle so I could offer him some assurance.  “ It’s late and I do have to be somewhat functional in the morning.”

It’s only half a life, but miles easier than the truth.  

He nods mindlessly.  His gaze refocusing as he comes back into himself, realizing just how close he’d come to doing something reckless.  

It’s closer to 1am than midnight as we leave in his car, so most of the houses in his neighborhood are dark aside from a single porch light or a yellow light in a single bedroom.  I’ve always liked being driven around in the dark.  It reminds me of late night trips from Milan to B. over rolling, dusty hills, where I’d follow the stars through the backseat window of my parents Fiat, listening to the radio, volume low and crackling, until I fell asleep.  

As we approach campus, we pass groups of students laughing and walking from one drunken party to the next. It’s Thursday night after all and they have so much living left to do.  I envy them without envying them at all.

He parks his car under the awning of my hotel, shutting off the engine. The emergency brake grinds as he yanks it into place.  The light from inside the hotel spills into his car, casting us in an uneven light.

I feel him looking at me and meet his gaze, gently.  With little hesitation, he lifts his hand to brush across my cheek.  His thumb presses my jaw, his long fingers rest on my neck.  It’s the first touch all day that could be misconstrued as anything but platonic and he saves it for the end.  How very us.   

“That beard,” he says, with a pitchless laugh.  I rub at the coarse hair, where he’d just touched me.

“I’ve been thinking about shaving it.”

“Don’t.”  His answer is blissfully quick.  “When do you take off tomorrow?”  He asks with hope in his voice that we might steal one more meal together, a coffee, one last glimpse of each other before I go.

“Depends on how long my meeting lasts, I suppose.”

“What’s it for, by the way?  A new writing project with someone or…?”

It’s time he knows the truth.  I clasp my hands between my knees.  My fingers feel cold against the back of my hands.

“I’m a finalist for a teaching position here.”

He stares at me, breath shallow for several long seconds.  When he tries to speak an aborted vowel sound comes out instead, cropped and breathless, probably meant to be the start of the word ‘you’.  

“I met with the department heads earlier today,” I say when he remains speechless.  “I presented my lecture to a grad seminar. I just have my interview with Dean Cartwright in the morning.”

I use the name because I know that is his Dean too. In theory, we’d share the same College within the University, the same Provost and Dean.  We’d inhabit different floors on same building, even possibly serve on committees together.  It would be impossible for our lives not to overlap.

“You knew I worked here?”

“Obviously.” I try not to roll my eyes.

“And you applied anyway?”  

“It’s not every day an opening at one of the most prestigious universities in the country comes up in French and Italian Romantic poetry,” I protest.  “Look, it’s not what it looks like, ok?   I mostly applied to get leverage for a higher salary at my current school.  I can guess who the other finalists are.  It’s a ridiculously tough pool of applicants.”

“Now isn’t the time to start being humble, Elio,” he snears.  “You’re the best out there on your subject.  They’d be stupid not to offer you the job.”  He looks out the driver side window.

“But even if they do, I’m not sure I’ll take it.  I like my life in Boston.  I’m tenured at the college, I’ve got a great place, good friends...”

“But you might?”  He asks, looking at me.  I shrug to indicate my uncertainty  “You might be moving here and you didn’t say a damn thing about all this time?”

“I’m telling you now,” I say calmly.

This isn’t anger, this is an inability to process the situation.  I remember the day a colleague had sent me the link to the job posting.  I’d clicked it, more curious than anything else, and stared at the computer screen, my brain tumbling over itself.  Why had this opportunity waited so long to present itself?  

“I almost didn’t come to see you today,” I say.

“Why?”  

“I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me or want to see me if you I did.”

“Elio, no,” he’s gutted.

I put my hands up passively. “I had prepared myself for any and all possibilities.  But then, it was so good to see you, Oliver.   _So good_.” He places his hand on my knee and squeezes.  “I didn’t want that hanging over us.  The possibility of some job was not what I wanted tonight to be about.”

“What did you want it to be about then?”

My heart clenches.  

“Just us.”

He meets me in the middle. The seat belts strain on our chests, our hands work to find traction on our coats and we hold onto this embrace for too long.  He doesn’t try to kiss me, though I know if he did, I’d kiss him back with my whole body.  

Instead, we breathe heavily, like men who have just crossed the finished line of a marathon.  We had not realized the effort carrying these past 15 years of missing each other had taken until we could unload the weight on the other.

“Be brilliant tomorrow, Elio,” he whispers against my ear, not encouragement but a plea on both our parts.  He pulls back, shadows falling against his cheeks and brow.  “You will let me know, won’t you?  Whatever you decide?”  

“Of course,” I say.

Eventually, I undo my seat belt and extract myself from my seat.  This night.  Possibly from him forever because regardless of promises made we both know how life works.  I watch him drive away, squinting into the distance until I can’t follow the red tail lights of his car any longer.

*

_Only one more final, a weekend of grading, several painful hours of wrangling the new online grade submission form and Oliver will finally be on Christmas break.  They’d already started celebrating Hanukkah two nights before and the boys are getting antsy for their break to start.  Oliver is ready for some downtime too._

_He piles together a set of essays from his Ancient Epics class, trying not to read any lest he be disappointed by the students work before he even begins properly when his phone rings._

_“Hello,” he says._

_“Oliver, it’s Elio.  Is this a bad time?”_

_It’s been two months since Elio had miraculously appeared in his lecture hall.  He hasn’t heard anything from him since.  Not a call.  Not an email.  Not a word about the outcome of Elio’s interview.  He’d tried not to take it personally, to tell himself he’d managed without Elio for 15 years so what was the rest of his life?  But in reality he’s been waiting for this call._

_“Course not.  How have you been?”_

_“Fine, you?”_

_“Good, busy.  Happy Hanukkah, by the way.”  He tries to play it cool._

_“Right, same to you.”_

_He can tell by the way Elio is speaking, clipped sentences and rushed words, that he’s anxious eager to get to the point.  He doesn’t delay._

_"Look, I just wanted you to know, they’ve offered me the job.”_

_Oliver pulls the mouthpiece away from his head, just in case he makes some sort of decipherable sound of elation through his clamped lips across the line._

_“It’s taken a while to get things settled, offers and counter offers but I finally got the final paperwork today it’s….”  Oliver can hear papers shuffling on the other end of the phone and he imagines Elio scanning through the fine print again.  “It’s a completely ridiculous offer.  They’ve set something up between the Romance Language and Lit departments.  They’ve basically asked for me to create my own new interdisciplinary degree program.  And the salary…”   He blows a breath out through his lips.  It makes the hair on the back of Oliver’s neck stand up._

_“So are you going to accept it?”_

_“I’d like to.”  The statement lacks any conviction._

_“What’s the hesitation?”_

_“I just felt like before I signed I needed to speak with you.  To ask….”_

_“...If I mind?”_

_It’s the mirror of his ages old question._

_“Yes,” Elio says simply._

_“Will what I say make any difference?”_

_“My answer wouldn't have made a difference when you asked then, but you still asked.”  Elio was always too smart for his own good.  “I just don’t want to make things difficult for you.”_

_"Oh, Elio,” Oliver sighs. “You’ve been making things difficult for me since the day I met you.”_

_They are both silent for a moment.  Oliver leans back in his chair, swiveling back and forth. He presses his eyes closed, knowing what he says next could change his life forever._

_“Sign the contract.”_

_“You’re sure?”  Elio exhales._

_"No,” Oliver says, a nervous rush skittering out from his heart under every inch of his skin.  “Sign it anyway.”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> SURPRISE! This is going to be a series. Get ready for the boys working together, secret affairs, way more angst and a happy ending for these poor idiots who deserve nothing less than the stars.
> 
> Few things:  
> 1) In my head, I'm imagining Oliver at Brown University and Elio at Boston College.  
> 2) Stephanie will not play the poor wife in this series. At least I hope not. I hope to make her sympathetic and her own character. I also hope to have his boys involved but we'll see.  
> 3) Oliver's comments about being ashamed to like Wagner come from the fact that he was very anti-Semetic. However, Elio's comment is almost a direct quote from a Jewish conductor I work with. If you're curious about this, Wagner and Me with Stephen Frye is a fabulous documentary that delves into the trouble of being Jewish but loving Wagner's music.  
> 4) Mr. Perlman's line about "Just love him etc." came from my mom in my early, very difficult days of motherhood. Thanks, mom.  
> 5) Pardon the shift from 1st to 3rd in the last section. The rest of the series will be in 3rd person.
> 
> Thanks so very much for reading and commenting!! I'd love to hear what you think! Follow me on twitter or tumblr! (aus_elysium02 and auselysium)


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